


There'll Be a Next Year

by Katreal



Series: Memory Not Found: Shatterstuck [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Christmas Eve, Dirk Strider's C++ Parenting, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Original Character(s), POV Second Person, Time Travel, Unreliable Narrator, side fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:35:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21965050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katreal/pseuds/Katreal
Summary: A year ago, hearing nothing from Bro about Christmas wouldn't have been weird. This year, Dave doesn't know what to expect.Things have changed.A lil side one-shot for Defragmentation.
Relationships: Dave Strider & Dirk Strider
Series: Memory Not Found: Shatterstuck [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1192528
Comments: 21
Kudos: 170





	There'll Be a Next Year

**Author's Note:**

> Set between chapters 58 and 60. I'm not entirely sure if it's Canon, but I got the idea in my head anyway and it wanted to be written. So I did. 
> 
> Happy Holidays!

You never think about Christmas.

It’s never really been a thing.

Not really.

You used to look forward to it, not because of the gifts--you’d always wake up to find something left unwrapped on the inside of your door. Not because of the lights, or the decorations, because nothing really changed in casa del Strider around the holidays. The only difference is the fact that, for one week, you get your winter holiday. A week when Bro would lock you out of the living room for most of the day and record the Christmas Special for his website--which really, you didn’t mind. You had access to the bathroom and food in your closet so it was nice to have a week without booby traps. A week without training. The greatest gift to you wasn’t the item, but the _break._

But this year was different. This year Bro was different. You didn’t have to touch your stash you (still) keep in the closet because the living room door never closed. Things just kept going as they did. Bro would work, you would wander out when you got hungry, maybe plop yourself down on the futon and watch a movie or play a game or something. 

Sometimes you’d hear the typing stop, hear the scrape of plastic against plastic as the wheels turned in their casing, pushing back out against the short fibers of the carpet and Bro turned the chair around to watch quietly.

You’d feel the prickle of your attention tap dancing on your nerves. And you _force_ yourself to ignore it, channeling that nervous energy into a running commentary that helped mute that distressed bird.

Things are different now. 

With Bro.

It’s weird.

So you don’t know what to expect as Christmas neared. Unlike with your birthday, Bro didn’t ask you what you wanted. Even as you waited and prepared a list of ideas in preparation for it.You left them on his desk eventually.

They vanished, like usual, but he didn’t _say_ anything.

That wouldn’t have bothered you before the incident. But now it makes you jumpy.

Are you going to just skip Christmas? Did your birthday count? Did he forget? Is he somehow oblivious to the white elephant in the room that’s poking you incessantly with its trunk and tip toeing around on its oh so dainty little elephant toes shaking the house with every step?

You even put a Christmas movie on a few days ago out of curiosity, to see if he’d react. 

He didn’t. For the record.

And so nothing changed.

Until Christmas Eve.

It was a bad night. You fell asleep against Bro well beyond the point where your exhausted brain could keep track of the incessant ticking, and then woke from an exhaustion-fueled snooze in your bed. Not naturally, not at all, but kicked out of bed screaming by the angry buzzing of the bell, tearing through the veil of sleep. Groaning you shove your head under the pillow, pressing it down over your ears to try and block out the buzzing, as if you could push yourself back to unconsciousness.

It didn’t work. 

Especially once you realized _why_ it didn’t work.

Who the hell was ringing the doorbell???

No one ever comes over!

It could be delivery. Blearily you peek your head out from beneath the patterned sheets, glaring at the sunlight streaming in through the window and catching in the amber of your suncatcher. It’s fucking afternoon already. Could be delivery.

Maybe.

Even.

A present?

You hear movement through the hallway outside, the noisy is as fuck door unlatching and. Voices? Fucking _fine_ , your curiosity is overpowering the part of you that just wants to get back to your interrupted cat-nap so you roll out of bed and shuffle your feet accross the carpeted floor, sheets trailing behind you like a cape.

Like one of your feathered friends, spotting some shiny ass motherfucker out of the corner of its eye, you creep forward, toward the door. 

You push the door to your room open a crack, but only a crack because you know Bro will notice otherwise. He might even notice this much, but you’re hoping he’ll be distracted because of the unusual occurrence. You feel strangely giddy. Like _you're_ the ninja now. Snooping through the halls and dropping all them eaves. But silently. No one can hear these eaves as they settle all over the floor.

“Thank you.” Bro, grunting. “Sorry for being last minute about this.”

“I was the one to offer,” That--it takes you a moment to place the voice because it’s been a few weeks; what was _Stevens_ doing here??? He hasn’t actually been over since--fuck, he didn’t even come up when he drove you and Bro home. Just dropped you off. “Oof, where do you want this? And where’s Dave? Don’t you think he’d like to help?”

What…? Why would you _want_ to help? 

“Living room.” You can’t really see anything from your mere crack, but you hear him grunt again. Something shifting. “If that hellspawn of a buzzer didn’t wake him up, Dave’s asleep still.”

“Bad night?” 

Another affirmative grunt, and you hear the voices continue down the hall. You hesitate. Counting out one minute. Two minutes. Three minutes. Four. More movement. Voices coming back, “There’s two more boxes, I wasn’t sure how much you wanted. I also picked up something for Dave; figured the kid deserves it.”

“Won’t you need any of this shit?”

The noisy ass door again, and more shifting. Then it thuds back into its frame.

“Nah, I’m going over to my sister’s tonight. She makes a fucking phenomenal turkey, dude, if there’s anything left I’ll bring you some leftovers but I can’t guarentee anything her kids are black _holes_...”

Woah man, Stevens is on a roll today. You wait, pressed against the door, restarting your countdown. One minute. Two. Three minutes. Four.

57, 58, 59… Fingers curl around the metal knob and you push.

A fuckin’ kitten sneaking your way to the half-open door, you skulk down the hall. Not so much out of fear, and, okay, you might have admitted you actually have an issue with Bro but right now your curiosity outweighs you caution and besides, Stevens is there.

Stevens is way too... _nice_ to help out with Bro’s old shenanigans. It helps shut up the squawking bird.

You are not sneaking because you’re scared. You’re sneaking because you’re curious as fuck and you want to figure out exactly what you’re sticking your nose into the potential wasp’s nest.

You huddle at the door, feeling like a _superspy_ listening at keyholes. Either Bro’s sneaky kid-dar is broken or Stevens is acting like walking talking interference, but you still don’t get those tell-tale pinpricks so you feel confident in pushing the door open just a little bit more. You peer around the edge, finding Bro standing awkwardly holding some probably too big box with black marker scrawled all over it. A scrawl you can’t actually read because it’s faded with time. If you reached out and grabbed that ever ticking clock and wound it back, would it be legible?

But that’s just silly. It’s impossible.

You can’t tell what they’re doing. Stevens is clearly rooting through another box that he’d set down on the futon. It’s largely blocked by the raised back so can’t see shit.

“...you can set that down Dirk! Most of that shit requires the tree and that’s in here somewher--AHAH!”

Tree?? 

He straightens up, pulling out a _second_ box. This one with a colorful graphic on it.

“Is that a fucking _christmas tree bro???_ ” Stevens startles like a jackrabbit, almost dropping the brightly colored box back onto the futon, and yes, said box does have a graphic with a fucking _christmas tree_ on it. Even Bro twitches, the weight of his gaze finally falling on you but you’re too flabbergasted to care. “Since when do we get a tree since when do we do _Christmas_ when it isn’t involving gratuitous puppet murder and since when do trees fit in a box small enough to fit into another box on the couch are we in a twilight zone???”

“Dave--please--” Stevens, as usual, doesn’t seem to be able to hold up against your torrent of breathless syllables, “Dirk just asked--”

“I thought we’d do one this year. That’s all.” Bro states quietly, placing his box down onto a hastily cleared space on his desk. “You seemed like you wanted it.”

...was he actually _paying attention_ when you marathoned the entire Home Alone franchise the other night? It’d been entirely for genuine ironic purposes, honest. It wasn’t some passive aggressive stab at the fact that Christmas looked well and truly canceled.

You miss John. It would have been a hoot watching those movies with him. He’d have a blast booby trapping his shit like that.

“Yes, well,” Stevens places the box back down, popping the tab and pulling it open, “Yes, this is a tree, and yes it is a small tree. When planning for apartment living one tends to downsize when able. It ends up quite cozy, in my opinion.” 

He pulls out several green bristles, spreading the fake limbs one one hand and inspecting the faux needles, before setting them aside and doing it again, “Would you like to help decorate, Dave? Half the fun, I think, is helping see it all come together.”

...Decorate?

You flick a glance at Bro. Hesitating. He hadn’t wanted to wake you up in the first place. What if this was supposed to be a surprise? Is he upset that you ruined the surprise? If he wanted to surprise you he would have told Stevens to text him and not ring the fucking bell from hell.

“Can I?”

“Of course,” Bro responds slowly, awkwardly not looking at you. Like he’s embarrassed. “This is for you.”

...well what the fuck are you supposed to say to that?

You answer by stumbling out of the hallway and fully into the room. Commiting to this stupid parody of a hallmark family special. You put the tree together. It’s easy, take the branch and find the colored dot. Put the hook into the slot with the same colored dot. Simple, but there’s something fucking satisfying about seeing the thing go from a bare skinny stick to a cute lil fake tree that is smaller than you are tall. You watch with pride as Bro picks it off the floor where you’ve been working and places it on top of the speaker in the corner while Stevens starts muttering about tinsel.

You pick red, obviously.

Bro, to your surprise, picks green. 

“Aw man bro, really, come on. Green? Seriously? That’s so vanilla. Classic Christmas. Red and green. Booooring! Why do you even have green tinsel? Really? It’s green on green, you can hardly see it against the tree! Why does green tinsel even _exist_ \--”

“Actually, tinsel isn’t only used for trees.” Stevens interjects with amusement when you need to take a quick breath, but apparently not quick enough, “Many households will use it to decorate banisters or hang it on the walls, ‘decking the halls’, as it were. The green shows up quite well in that case.”

“Yeah but this isn’t a hall it’s a fucking _tree_! Even if it’s a lighter color and hella reflective, you can’t even see the green amongst the needles! C’mon, at least go with the silver. Or even the gold--gold is almost orange!”

Bro won’t budge despite your wheedling, and it’s only marginally better when Stevens sighs at you both and starts stringing a small set of gold and white lights around and through the branches, catching on the reflective shit once he plugs the final strand in the plug behind the speaker. He wordlessly pulls out a red smuppet and holds it up helplessly, raising an eyebrow at your bro and gesturing at the pile of smuppets unceremoniously smushed up back behind the speaker. 

Bro quickly glances at you, and then away, uncomfortably.

“I thought you put all these away?”

You knew they were there, of course.

It doesn’t bother you _that_ much. It’s not like they ever leave the Forbidden Corner.

“The dust in the attic is bad for the fabric.” Bro responds at last, taking the thing by the belly and holding it, almost delicately for a moment, before tossing it back to join its brethren. 

There’s a story there, you think, looking back and forth between that raised eyebrow and Bro’s dismissive shrug. 

They don’t tell you it, however, and it’s time to decorate the tree.

The box Bro had is _full_ of shit. Some is obviously personal to Stevens, or his family--he was the one supplying the goods after all--but most of the haul is just generic multi-colored baubles and some vanilla christmas shit. You grumble about not having anything fun--although there’s a Santa in shades, swimtrunks, and even yellow fucking floaties in here. You set that one aside. Along with a unicorn for bro--and then clam up when Bro sighs with a “We’ll get our own next year.”

_Next year._

Fuck, you didn’t even _consider_ there’d be a next year.

Your face must have been priceless because Bro snaps a picture with his phone.

It wasn’t the first time. Between sorting through the boxes and placing shit around the room--there’s a stuffed reindeer of all things lounging across the top of the tv. It makes you want to laugh, maybe a little maniacally, because with all this shit lying around it almost feels familiar. Normal. Just Christmas themed shit over fetish plush toys--he’s been taking pictures. Documenting shit. He probably has enough pictures to make a timelapse of you and Stevens putting the tree together. 

This was just the last fucking straw.

“Hey! Don’t tell me you’re getting into scrapbooking now! Between the focus on healthy shit and the baking and the sewing, I’m not sure I can take it if you end up picking up yet another typical middle aged mom-esque hobby.”

“It’s for Data.” He lowers the phone, thumbing through the menus, presumably sending the file along on its way, “They’ve never had a Christmas celebration either.”

Ah.

Right.

dataJammer.

It’s still so fuckin’ weird to think of Bro having _friends._

That’s what they are. Bro and Stevens. You plop yourself down on the couch as Stevens works to hang the ornaments--you did what you could, but the top half of the tree is out of your little baby arms reach-- and Bro vanishes up into the crawlspace for a while. You can hear the sounds of paper tearing through the panels in the ceiling. Dog damnit, he’s wrapping presents isn’t he?

You don’t know what to do.

You don’t know what to think.

You’re happy but.

Fuck.

“Was this your idea?” You ask Stevens at last. He pauses in the middle of hanging your tropical santa.

“No. Believe it or not, it was your brother who expressed the desire to do something, he just didn’t know where to start. Apparently you’ve never had a celebration before?”

You shake your head, “Nah, like he’d give me a gift but that’s it. Though…” You trail off, hesitating, before plowing forward again, “I guess I never really...asked? Christmas was always a weird time.”

“Mm...the special, right?”

“God, I forget you _work_ with him on that shit.”

“I don’t actively help with production but, yes, I suppose I do.” Stevens responds somewhat distantly, amused, then something flickers across his face. Something you only catch because you’re used to watching Bro, and while you can’t read it--you don’t know his tics--but know it was _there, “_ Dave… Your brother...he wasn’t very attentive, all these years, was he?”

The words are caught in your throat. The words to confirm, or deny. All gone. 

Stevens doesn’t push.

Eventually you manage a, “It’s getting better--He’s, getting better.”

“That’s... good.” He sounds uncomfortable. It’s his own fault for asking. You _feel_ fucking uncomfortable.

And that’s all there is.

When your Bro descends and decaptchalogues the pile of presents he just spent a half an hour wrapping, as well as one blue box, and one purple, that apparently came in the mail yesterday…

It’s Christmas.

There’s a tree in Lil’ Cal’s spot. Brightening up the place. Red and Green and Gold and White, swimtrunk santas and unicorns prancing through the branches. 

Bro produces a stuffed black bird and clips it to the top of the tree. It makes your heart skip a beat. Because you _know_ he didn’t buy that. They don’t make crow tree-toppers. That’s way too specific.

You don’t ask. He doesn’t say anything.

Stevens pulls a tray full of fresh fruit out of the fridge before he leaves. You feast on strawberries and Bro’s home-cooked fish, a bottle of AJ balancing on the arm of the futon at your elbow.

You put on Finding Nemo, and curl yourself into his side. You don’t even mind when you hear the tap tap tap of bro’s typing, because you can lazily glance over and see the green text scrolling down his screen.

You don’t have a fireplace. It’s too fucking warm for snow to even be a consideration. But.

It’s Christmas.

And there will be a Next Year.

You’re okay with that.


End file.
